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Subject: Science Fiction Interpretations

Posted by: brm50diboll
Date: Jan 02 17

I have debated with myself starting a Virtual Blog for months. I have so little free time nowadays that I may not be able to keep it up, but I think I'll at least try. This is intended to be wide-ranging, so it wouldn't fit in the Television, Movies, or Literature boards categories and I don't want to clog up General with just my observations but here I can rant if I choose and people can choose to ignore me or engage my flawed analysis if they wish.

469 replies. On page 21 of 24 pages. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

terraorca

Happy Birthday Brian, belated as my wishes are, they are sincere.
I do not visit this thread as often as I should, it is mostly interesting.

Reply #401. Aug 23 19, 11:04 AM

brm50diboll

Thanks Mark. Sometimes I go quite awhile between my contributions here. It's been a fairly boring summer for me. But be assured, when I have something to say here, I certainly will. There are some things coming up in the fall I'm sure I'll want to comment on.

Reply #402. Aug 23 19, 11:16 AM

brm50diboll

The upcoming sixth season of CW's The Flash does not begin until October, but I'm looking forward to it. In the Season 5 finale, the Flash's archenemy Reverse Flash (Eobard Thawne) escaped from future prison in 2049 by manipulating the Flash's daughter Nora West-Allen to time travel back to 2019 and alter the timeline. In the process, Nora gets "erased" from existence and Reverse Flash escapes yet again, undoubtedly to appear at some point in the upcoming sixth season. Here's two key scenes from that finale:

https://tinyurl.com/yyjbhxmv

https://tinyurl.com/yyjwmfko

But before we surely see Reverse Flash again, it has been announced Bloodwork will be the "Big Bad" of the first half of the upcoming season, leading up to the "Crisis on Infinite Earths" crossover midseason. I'm looking forward to it.

Reply #403. Aug 29 19, 3:48 PM

brm50diboll

A classic scene from the cult classic "They Live", which I've previously discussed. And, if you have the nerve to, check out the second video on the page.

https://tinyurl.com/yya9zce5

Reply #404. Sep 22 19, 9:17 PM

brm50diboll

A few words about the third season Star Trek episode "Requiem for Methuselah". I've discussed this general issue before: there are a lot of problems with the idea of human immortality. The Twilight Zone episode "Long Live Walter Jameson" also points some of these out.

OK. A brief plot summary so I will be able to make my points: The Enterprise, seeking a cure for a plague that is ravaging the ship, comes to a mysterious planet controlled by a man called "Mr. Flint". We learn that Mr. Flint is from Earth originally and is over 6000 years old and that he had been, at various times on Earth, numerous historical figures, including Leonardo da Vinci and Johannes Brahms, among many others. One of the problems with being an immortal genius is the loneliness caused by the fact that he outlives any human woman, so Flint creates android females in an effort to make a perfect match for himself. His most recent creation, Rayna, is almost ready, and so Flint actually engineered the Enterprise's visit to his planet in order to give Rayna the final touches she needs: real human emotions which can only be developed by contact with real humans, particularly Captain Kirk (guaranteed, as we know, to always fall in love with that week's female guest star.) Unfortunately, Rayna cannot handle the conflict caused by her new emotions, and, when forced to choose between Flint and Kirk, dies.

Anyway, here's a clip:

https://tinyurl.com/y4eobwlr

Now the problem with trying to make an artificial intelligence more human-like is that the creator attempting to do so, despite being immensely old, talented, and experienced, still makes some mistakes. And mistakes, in the case of creations intended to be immortal, lead to terrible suffering. The "solution" of this episode, unfortunately, is to have both Rayna and even Flint himself die. Flint does not die on screen, but McCoy tells Kirk that when he left Earth, he began aging and will die in a few years.

I don't think Flint's creation of Rayna would have worked even without Kirk's actions. Two highly intelligent people would not have gotten along indefinitely in any case. One or both of them would eventually have sought out others out of sheer curiosity if nothing else, and then there would be conflict. What would conflict between immortal beings that can't really hurt each other look like? Maybe I'll look at that question when I discuss "Return to Tomorrow" sometime.

Reply #405. Oct 22 19, 9:07 PM

terraorca

I find your conclusions about two highly intelligent people coexisting, interesting.

Reply #406. Oct 22 19, 10:50 PM

brm50diboll

So back to Star Trek for a little more speculation about the nature of immortality. First, a clip from near the end of "Errand of Mercy" when the supposedly meek Organians reveal their true selves:

https://tinyurl.com/wlynmor

I'm a little irritated that the clip cuts off Spock's line: "Not life as we know it at all." This particular episode is full of great quotes and things to think about. One of the Organians earlier said no one had died on their planet in uncounted thousands of centuries. Spock later says that the Organians are as far above us on the evolutionary scale as we are to the amoeba. And the "Pure Energy" quote in the clip I posted gets sampled in a classic 80s song I will eventually put in my Forums Music thread (Information Society).

The idea there are beings that were once human, but evolved far beyond that point shows up in multiple Star Trek episodes. In "Return to Tomorrow", we meet Sargon and his companions.

https://tinyurl.com/vjocfrm
https://tinyurl.com/v5glzwr

Sargon and his companions were godlike, but still prone to human frailties. At the end of the episode, Sargon and his wife decide to leave forever and go into oblivion rather than dare be tempted to possess human bodies again.

And then there is Gary Mitchell from the second pilot "Where No Man Has Gone Before"

https://tinyurl.com/wgopmfg

There are several other episodes that explore this theme ("Who Mourns for Adonais?", "Day of the Dove","Plato's Stepchildren",etc.), but it is tedious to cite them all. In "Where No Man Has Gone Before", Kirk earlier had exclaimed "Above all else, a god needs compassion!" Immortality in an imperfect human body leads to monstrous behavior. In "Day of the Dove", the humans and Klingons would be fighting each other outside the Galaxy for all eternity (with no one dying) were it not for their recognition they were being manipulated.

Reply #407. Nov 16 19, 9:26 PM

brm50diboll

I've been watching a variety of shows this fall but I've held off commenting until the seasons were complete. More specifically, I've been watching the "Watchmen" TV show and "His Dark Materials" on HBO, and season 6 of "The Flash" on the CW. Since "Watchmen" has finished its season, I think it's time to comment on it.

I think the show is uneven, but it has some appeal. In the first episode, I thought it was just politically correct nonsense, but I was determined to see it through, and I'm actually glad I did because it got better. The political correctness does permeate the show, but it wasn't totally one-sided, as I thought it would be, and the jabs at "President Redford" were interesting. I wonder if Robert Redford even knows he was made into the President on this show, and if so, I wonder what he thinks about it. (He is never portrayed on screen, however - just mentioned.)

Anyway, it turned out to be a very quirky show with an appeal to a niche audience. At first, Adrian Veidt (Ozymandias) is the *only* character from the original story (graphic novel or movie) that appears in the series and his character (portrayed by veteran actor Jeremy Irons) is strangely disconnected from every other character in the show, isolated in his own "estate". And Don Johnson's new character which was much hyped in the promos was killed off at the end of the first episode, so that episode really left me scratching my head.

Not all the iconic characters from the original appear in the series. Dan Dreiberg (Nite Owl II) is only mentioned, although the reference to "setting your Owl free from its cage" to Laurie was intringuing, though never followed up upon. And Rorschach, who was killed in the original story, also does not appear, although "Seventh Kavalry" members do wear Rorschach masks. Of course, I kept waiting for Dr. Manhattan to appear, and he finally does in the 8th (2nd to last) episode.

It was the third episode where things really begin to connect. The principal character of Laurie Blake (the FBI agent) is finally introduced (played by the excellent actress Jean Smart) and we discover that she is the former Silk Spectre II who has changed her surname to her late father's (Eddie Blake - "The Comedian" (from the original).) Laurie's character is excellent, as is her joke she tries to tell Dr. Manhattan on a phone call to Mars where he presumably is. The joke makes fun of, without explicitly naming, Nite Owl II, Ozymandias, and Dr. Manhattan, sending them all to "hell" for their character flaws, and then has a surprising "punch line" that sets up Laurie herself for undoing a certain fourth character I won't name here.

The show eventually does connect Ozymandias to the other characters, but not really until the finale (9th episode.) We do find out in the 8th episode where Dr. Manhattan finally appears that he had sent Ozymandias into exile on an "Eden" he had created on Jupiter's moon Europa some ten years before the main story and that Ozymandias has been spending all that time since trying to escape and get back to Earth, slowly going insane in the process.

https://tinyurl.com/sctema3

The basic conceit of all this, and I do think it is a worthwhile one, is the imagining of an answer to a question of "What would happen if masked crimefighters actually could exist?" Since Dr. Manhattan is the only one with actual superpowers (and he is a demigod), his appearance eventually was necessary to the resolution of the story.

So, it was interesting despite its limitations. The Louis Gossett, Jr. character of the 100-year old who turns out to have been "Hooded Justice" from the 1940s "Minutemen" (which eventually morphed into The Watchmen) was curious.

"Nothing Ever Ends"

I'm going to give a tepid positive review overall. If you like weird science fiction with alternate timelines (especially if you liked the original story), this version of "Watchmen" may be worth watching.

I have higher expectations for "His Dark Materials". It actually has Philip Pullman himself as an executive producer, and so far it has been very faithful to the first book ("The Golden Compass" or "The Northern Lights") and, in my opinion, superior to the Daniel Craig/Nicole Kidman movie version because, unlike that movie, it has *not* avoided dealing with the Magisterium, which is central in the books. The series plans to deal with the entire trilogy, I think. We'll see. I'll hold off commenting further until later, but it has definitely been worth watching so far.

Reply #408. Dec 18 19, 12:16 PM

brm50diboll

A more complete video clip for the scene in "Errand of Mercy" I referenced in post #407, containing Spock's quotes about "not life as we know it at all" and his reference to the evolutionary scale and the amoeba.

https://tinyurl.com/wv3fgnu

Merry Christmas!

Reply #409. Dec 24 19, 10:57 PM

brm50diboll

So now that I've seen the season finale of "His Dark Materials" on HBO, I am ready to give my review of it. I think it is quite good. It is able to do justice to the first novel in Philip Pullman's trilogy by breaking it into multiple episodes instead of cramming it into a single movie, and it addresses the Magisterium clearly, which the movie "The Golden Compass" failed to do despite its star power. When the central character is a young teen, there is plenty of risk, but I think Dafne Keen did an excellent job as Lyra Belacqua, a difficult part to play. And I was impressed with Ruth Wilson's performance as the sinister Mrs. Coulter. James McAvoy (of X-Men fame) did not have an extremely large role in this series (he will probably have a bigger part to play as Lord Asriel in next year's follow up, which will focus on the second novel in the series "The Subtle Knife"). In this series, McAvoy plays Lord Asriel as a bit of a mysterious mad scientist. The series followed the first novel closely, bit deviated from it a bit, mostly to foreshadow events that will play a part in the second series.

One of the things that always intrigued me about this story is the role the daemons play. I think the CGI for the daemons in this series was well-done, although I couldn't help but notice that you pretty much only saw the daemons of the main characters. It would probably have been too difficult to do CGI for the daemons of *every* character in the novel. The fact that Mrs. Coulter's daemon is unnamed and doesn't speak but quite malevolent was a good touch.

https://tinyurl.com/sy2t666

Overall, I liked it. Looking forward to Part 2 when it comes
And the intro was suitably creepy:

https://tinyurl.com/tyjm4kf

Reply #410. Dec 27 19, 7:51 PM

brm50diboll

https://tinyurl.com/tq72n5z
https://tinyurl.com/wzowlvg
https://tinyurl.com/um3hqft

OK, this post will obviously be about "Lost in Space". I just finished watching Season 2 of Netflix's "Lost in Space" reboot (I had watched Season 1 last year) and I have to say I really enjoyed it. I am going to refer both to the original 60s show and the reboot in this post and compare them. They are obviously very different.

The original 60s show (1965-1968, to be exact), created by Irwin Allen, the "Master of Disaster" known for his 60s TV shows and his 70s disaster movies like "The Poseidon Adventure" and "The Towering Inferno", is best known for being extremely campy, a sort of Sci-fi version of 60s "Batman". But it actually didn't start out that way. In the original unaired pilot, neither Dr. Smith nor the Robot appear. CBS accepted the pilot, but advised that the show needed a central antagonist. Irwin Allen hired Jonathan Harris to be that central antagonist, Dr. Smith, and the original intent for the character was for him to be a straight villain. In the negotiations to bring in Harris, hired after all the other cast members, it was decided to always show him as a "Special Guest Star", and this continued the full three years of the series. In fact, anyone who has watched the original series and paid careful attention to it will note that Dr. Smith *was* a straight villain for most of the first half of Season 1. Then Jonathan Harris began "acting broadly" (so to speak). Irwin Allen knew what Harris was doing and gave him approval to continue in that direction. Harris felt that he could not keep up the portrayal of a straight villain indefinitely. The audience would want the character brought to justice in one way or another. But Harris' acting turn made "Lost in Space" the camp classic it is known as. "Lost in Space" overlapped two years with "Star Trek" on competing NBC. Many people do not know today that "Lost in Space" always had considerably higher ratings than "Star Trek" and that "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry was actually under network pressure to make his show more like "Lost in Space". It is odd, given the ratings, that "Lost in Space" did not go to a fourth season. The ratings had slipped some in the third season, but it was unseen cast issues and rising production costs that led to the somewhat unexpected cancellation.

When Harris began to create the Dr. Smith we all knew and loved, the show shifted focus dramatically. It now mostly centered around Dr. Smith, Will Robinson (Billy Mumy) and the Robot. The rest of the Robinsons, as well as Major Don West, were in subsidiary roles. This grated on Guy Williams, in particular. As John Robinson, the family head, Williams was top-billed and expected to be the center of the show. He had played "Zorro", after all. There was considerable irritation that Harris had "usurped" the show from the Robinsons.

The theme song of "Lost in Space" was composed by the legendary John Williams, so long ago that he is billed in the closing credits of the show (which my links don't show) as "Johnny Williams".

Now to the Netflix reboot. Instead of playing it for camp, the decision was made to play it straight, as an action Sci-fi show with real peril in every episode. The characters kept their original names (obviously played by different actors) for the most part, the one big exception being the "Dr. Smith" character was cast as female. And Parker Posey, best known for appearances in numerous indy films, especially with Christopher Guest, emerged as the breakout character, but her performance had no camp in it.

In the pilot episode, Billy Mumy does a cameo as the real "Zachary Smith", but Parker Posey's character, a lifelong con artist and identity thief, whose real name is "June Harris" (Harris? Get it? Another reference to the late Jonathan Harris), steals his identity and becomes Dr. Zoe Smith. Her version of Dr. Smith is much, much darker than Harris' version. She is not completely evil, but she is definitely out for Number 1 throughout, and very good at psychological manipulation of the other characters.

The other characters are well written and well acted. Each episode features a crisis that threatens the life of at least one major character, and the others come together, despite the manipulations of Dr. Smith, to save the day. The Robot is portrayed as an alien robot whom Will Robinson saved and bonded to, becoming a friend of the Robinsons thereafter. The Robot protects the Robinsons against the other evil robots of his "species". The second season finale ends with a cliff hanger, so a third season must be planned. I'll be looking forward to it. If you a get a chance, check out the "Lost in Space" reboot (Seasons 1 and 2) on Netflix.

Reply #411. Jan 02 20, 12:40 PM

brm50diboll

I have enjoyed watching the sixth season of "The Flash" on The CW so far this season. They have recently aired the final parts of the five-part crossover "Crisis on Infinite Earths". It was pretty good. They really went for the cameos, though. Here's probably the biggest cameo of all in that crossover:

https://tinyurl.com/tlwfjrv
https://www.google.com/search?q=ezra+miller+and+grant+gustin&oq=ezra+miller+and+&aqs=chrome.0.0j69i57j0l2.6734j0j7&client=ms-android-verizon&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#imgrc=hTe8LLMllBAfLM:

Because Stephen Amell is done with "Arrow", his character of Green Arrow was killed off (sort of) in "Crisis on Infinite Earths". Apparently, there are plans for a continuation spinoff series called "Green Arrow and the Canaries". We'll see. The Flash now takes over in The CW as the senior series in the "Arrowverse". Reverse Flash, somewhat unexpectedly, did not appear in the crossover. But I expect him to show up at some point in the remaining episodes of the 6th season of The Flash.

Lots of fun to come with time travel, dimensional cross-breaching, and pop culture references.

Reply #412. Jan 18 20, 3:02 PM

brm50diboll

It's coming (next month, in fact):

https://tinyurl.com/w4s3afz

Reply #413. Feb 16 20, 7:57 PM

terraorca

Enjoyed the original, haven't seen the newest version.

Reply #414. Feb 16 20, 8:03 PM

brm50diboll

Since it is a series, it is much more complex than the original Yul Brynner movie (which I liked, by the way). A good deal of this blog has been devoted to analyzing the first two seasons of HBO's Westworld. The third season will take us into the "real world" behind Westworld and the other Delos parks (late 21st century timeframe.) This third season will add Aaron Paul to the cast. Of course, he is best known for playing Jesse Pinkman in "Breaking Bad". All I know about his character so far is that he is from the "real world". The trailer suggests multiple other Delos parks exist, perhaps "Nazi World" or some such.

Reply #415. Feb 16 20, 8:48 PM

brm50diboll

A little late, but the Reverse Flash returns:

https://tinyurl.com/sf4dltg

Unfortunately, we may not find out how this plot line resolves. I read that production of new "Flash" episodes have been suspended because of coronavirus. They only have a few episodes left "in the can", so to speak. Guess I was wrong. Guess Randall Flagg is loose, after all.

Reply #416. Mar 14 20, 12:13 PM

brm50diboll

https://tinyurl.com/ws9huxa

What does it do?
It tells you the truth.

Reply #417. Mar 18 20, 2:47 PM

brm50diboll

No, I haven't forgotten about this blog. I've been watching Season 3 of Westworld on HBO and have decided to defer most of my comments about it until after the end of the season. At this point (after 6 episodes), I will only make a couple of points: I have seen very little of the "Westworld" park in season 3. Almost all of the action takes place in the "real world" of the relatively near future (2050s, I believe). Some old characters from the first two seasons have not appeared at all, and several new characters have been introduced, so this third season seems very different from the first two. Not "Western" really, more of a traditional futuristic dystopia.

The thing that intrigues me is the artificial intelligence (supercomputer) they have built to be their artificial "god" that directs everyone's lives: Rehoboam. Several classic Star Trek episodes had explored what happened in societies whose "gods" turned out to be malfunctioning supercomputers, namely: "The Return of the Archons", "Operation: Annihilate", "The Apple", and (with the longest title of any Star Trek TOS episode) "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky". The "Twilight Zone" that had the "artificial god" theme was "The Old Man in the Cave".

As with anything, names in Westworld are carefully chosen, with meaning. The supercomputer, which very few know about, mainly the new villain, Serac, is named Rehoboam, after the fourth king of Israel. This name has significance. Rehoboam is a fourth-generation supercomputer given the "data" on every human in this society. The first three generations were named Saul, David, and Solomon, and were failures at predicting the future. Rehoboam is the "son" of Solomon, who in the Bible was the wisest man in the world who went astray ("But King Solomon loved many strange women....") and God told him his kingdom would be rent apart in the time of his son, Rehoboam, which happened. The ten northern tribes rebelled and became the kingdom of Israel (under Jeroboam), and Rehoboam was left only with the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, which became known as the kingdom of Judah.

Serac, who invented Rehoboam, knew that it was fantastic at short-term future predictions, and he used it to put everyone in the world on manageable "loops" to maintain world stability. But also knew that in *every* scenario, the long-term prediction of Rehoboam was chaos and destruction from uncontrollable "divergences". (Maybe COVID-19, but I'm editorializing here). Nevertheless, Serac continues to try to use Rehoboam to crush the "divergences" (mostly Delores) and hold onto power. The actor that plays Serac narrates this next trailer:

https://tinyurl.com/yalv223o

What if there were a "Rehoboam" someplace? Just think about that will you? Will you think about that, McNulty? (another little Twilight Zone joke)

Reply #418. Apr 23 20, 3:11 PM

brm50diboll

Well, I've waited long enough. I watched the final episodes of Season 3 of Westworld some time ago but just couldn't get the motivation to come back here and post about it, probably because I was disappointed. It's not that it was bad, it's just that it was so different from the first two seasons. It was more like a spin-off than a third season. There was virtually no Westworld in the third season of Westworld. It was almost all set in the "real world" of the 2050s. Several of the characters I had liked it the first two seasons I looked for in the third season and either didn't appear at all or just in flashbacks, like Anthony Hopkins' Dr. Robert Ford, for example. Clementine appeared for basically one scene and I only saw Teddy in a flashback. Too much time was spent on Dolores and Charlotte. The character of Bernard seemed to do fairly little.

The ending seemed mainly just to set up the fourth season (whenever that may come - possibly 2022). So "Solomon" is used to destroy "Rehoboam" and humans are freed to make their own decisions, which pretty much looked like abject chaos at the end of the final episode. The most interesting character was Ed Harris' William (aka "The Man in Black") and the most interesting part of the third season finale was in the post-credit scene where a Charlotte-controlled host clone of William (as "The Man in Black") kills the real William to take his place as what looks to be the new lead villain for the fourth season. Ed Harris is such an outstanding actor I could buy him as the principal villain of the series. (Again).

The idea that multiple host clones can be created from the same "pearl" and that they all start out identical but gradually become different from each other (sometimes even enemies) as a result of different experiences after their "creations" is an interesting take on the old relative importance of nature vs nurture argument. One consequence of this argument is that attempts to transfer the consciousness of humans into android bodies in an effort to achieve human immortality is doomed to failure because after the host clone is created, even though it thinks itself to be the original, changes in its thought patterns mark it as demonstrably different from the original to outside observers.

This particular point was looked at many years ago in the early Star Trek TOS episode "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" in which Nurse Chapel's old flame is discovered on an isolated planet with alien androids (the main one of which was played by Ted Cassidy (Ruk) - "Lurch" from the Addams Family). Nurse Chapel senses that her old flame Roger Corby isn't quite right. It turns out that Corby had years earlier transferred his consciousness into a cloned android body. At the end of the episode he argues vehemently that he really is Roger Corby, but attempts to prove it by telling her to ask him to "solve any equation", which only convinces her further that it really isn't him, and whatever was human about Roger Corby is gone forever.

https://tinyurl.com/y95ubxjm

Reply #419. Jun 16 20, 3:12 PM

brm50diboll

It's been awhile. The shortage of new material due to the suspension of television and movie filming from the -uh- recent events I shall not characterize further at this time has limited my choices of what to talk about here. I prefer new material over old. Nothing wrong with discussing HG Wells or Jules Verne, mind you, but I try to stay grounded in the 21st century as much as possible. But I must bow to the realities of the present situation and discuss something old. As I have discussed elsewhere, I haven't watched much Star Trek after The Original Series. But have watched some of The Next Generation and I have watched the various Star Trek movies over the years and I think the villains that are scariest to me in this more recent era are

The Borg

https://tinyurl.com/y5ykugmz

You shall be assimilated

Resistance is futile

What is so scary to me about The Borg? The loss of individual identity. A society can certainly accomplish more than any one individual, no matter how talented or powerful that individual. And for a society to function, there must be some common bonds that will override the will of the individual for the greater good when circumstances demand. But who gets to decide what is the greater good? And by what criteria? Very difficult questions I don't want to spend too much more time on right now, however.

But let's look at the extremes. A society where there are no shared values or culture descends into anarchy and chaos. That isn't good for the individuals in the society. But a society where individuality has been completely crushed is even worse, no matter how enlightened the leadership may be. A certain degree of individual freedom is absolutely necessary for human motivation, creativity, and change that is needed to adapt to changing circumstances. So the history of humanity has been, in one dimension at least, a struggle to find the right balance between individual freedom and social responsibility. I always was scared to death by the ending of Orwell's 1984 because it represented the destruction of Winston Smith's individuality despite all his desperate efforts to maintain some piece of himself.

So we have nation states that experiment and revise the exact mix of the two as "laboratories" (if you will) to see what works best for what cultures at what eras of history. Clearly not a perfect process, but better than the alternative because, unlike what The Borg Queen and The Party in "1984" assert, perfection is unattainable. Perfection shouldn't even be the goal. A more harmonious balance should be. Any alleged utopia under further scrutiny will be shown to be a dystopia. And the more "perfect" the alleged utopia, the worse the actual dystopia.

Biology teaches us there is such a thing as "superorganisms". Honey bees are certainly an efficient society. But that is a terrible "role model" for humans because individual bees are pure instinct, and individual humans have minds. Unfortunately, as history as shown, there are "tipping points" in societies. While there is a wide middle ground among various societies in the mix, those that stray too far to the side of individuality can descend into absolute chaos and the ultimate destruction of that society and those that stray too far in the other direction produce a society that deadens its population and suppresses resentments and impedes creativity, frequently leading ultimately to violent revolution and again, the destruction of that society. So recognizing those "tipping points" and avoiding going too far is certainly a problem. The development of computer power and AI are certainly matters worthy of ethical consideration here. We do not want to become drones in The Borg Collective. What the right mix is will certainly differ from one society to the next. One size definitely does not fit all.

On a side note, I always liked Alice Krige. Her performance as The Borg Queen (I know, she is not the only actress to have played that role) was certainly creepy. She is a fine actress. If you ever get a chance, you should check out the 1981 movie "Ghost Story".

https://tinyurl.com/y4wwzo4u

See you around again sometime later.

Reply #420. Aug 25 20, 11:39 AM

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